A friend of mine has
been raped. She is very disturbed about it. In what way can she atone for this
so that her sense of guilt is lessened in front of God?

Answer:

There are two
possibilities why the unfortunate incident happened to your friend. It is
possible that she did nothing to blame at all, and somebody just did it to
satisfy his animal desire. It is also possible that your friend allowed the
person the kind of liberty that ultimately inclined him to go to the extent of
raping her.

In the first case, your friend
need not worry about it. Indeed it is understandable that she has been
emotionally bruised. However, she should take solace from the fact that the
Almighty is extremely forgiving and sympathetic towards those people who have
been a target of callous behaviour of others. The Qur’an tells us that there
were people at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an who used to force their
slave girls into prostitution although those ladies were not doing it willingly.
The Almighty says about them:

And if anyone forces them into
it, then surely after such a compulsion, Allah will be forgiving and merciful to
them. (24:33)

If that is the case, your friend
should not feel guilty. Allah is definitely merciful to people like her.

However, if your friend did allow
the man some liberty to come close to her, and then on finding her unwilling to
have sex with him, he forcibly fulfilled his desire, then she too has to be
blamed for it. In that case she should most certainly seek forgiveness from the
Almighty as much as is possible, and, in addition, should firmly resolve to
adopt an attitude where by men do not come as close to her as to cause that
possibility to get repeated.

Allah Almighty has desired that
we be careful about the members of the opposite sex to enable us from avoiding
the possibility of the kind of embarrassment your friend has gone through.